India After 20 Years

Draft January, 2007 INDIA’s GROWTH: PAST AND FUTURE by Shankar Acharya* * Honorary Professor and Member Board of Governors, Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations (ICRIER) Paper for presentation at the Eighth Annual Global Development Conference of the Global Development Network, January 14-16, Beijing. 0 India’s Growth: Past and Future By Shankar Acharya1 This paper is divided into five sections. Section I briefly reviews India’s growth performance since 1950 and indicates a few salient features and turning points.Section II discusses some of the major drivers of India’s current growth momentum (which has averaged 8 percent in the last 3 years) and raised widespread expectations (at least, in India) that 8 percent plus growth has become the new norm for the Indian economy. Section III points to some of the risks and vulnerabilities that could stall the current dynamism if corrective action is not taken. Section IV appraises the co untry’s medium term growth prospects. The final section assesses some implications of India’s rise for the world economy. I Review of Growth Performance, (1950-2006)Table 1 summarizes India’s growth experience since the middle of the twentieth century. For the first thirty years, economic growth averaged a modest 3. 6 percent, with per capita growth of a meager 1. 4 percent per year. Those were the heydays of state-led, import-substituting industrialization, especially after the 1957 foreign exchange crisis and the heavy industrialization bias of the Second Five Year Plan (1956-61). While the strategy achieved some success in raising the level of resource mobilization and investment in the economy, it turned out to be hugely costly in terms of economic efficiency.The inefficiencies stemmed not just from the adoption of a statist, inward1 The author is Member, Board of Governors and Honorary Professor at Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relat ions (ICRIER). He was Chief Economic Adviser to Government of India (1993-2000). This paper draws liberally on his recent paper, â€Å"India’s Growth: Past Performance and Future Prospects†, presented at the Tokyo Club Macro Economy Conference on â€Å"India and China Rising†, December 6-7, 2006, Tokyo. 1 ooking policy stance (at a time when world trade was expanding rapidly) but also from the extremely detailed, dysfunctional and corruption-breeding controls that were imposed on industry and trade (see, for example, the classic study by Bhagwati and Desai (1970)). Table 1: Growth of GDP and Major Sectors (% per year) Year 1951/521980/81 (1) 1981/821990/91 (2) 1992/931996/97 (3) 1997/982001/02 (4) 2002/032005/06 (5) 1992/932005/06 (6) 1981/822005/06 (7) Agriculture and Allied Industry 2. 5 3. 5 4. 7 2. 0 1. 9 3. 0 3. 0 5. 3 7. 1 7. 6 4. 4 8. 0 6. 6 6. 5 Services 4. 5 6. 7 7. 6 8. 2 8. 9 . 2 7. 4 GDP 3. 6 5. 6 6. 7 5. 5 7. 0 6. 4 5. 9 GDP per capita 1. 4 3. 4 4. 6 3. 6 5. 3 4. 4 3. 8 Source: CSO . Note: Industry includes Construction. At the same time, one should not forget that the GDP growth rate of 3. 6 percent was four times greater than the 0. 9 percent growth estimated for the previous half century of British colonial rule (Table 2). Moreover the growth was reasonably sustained, with no extended periods of decline. Nor were there inflationary bouts of the kind which racked many countries in Latin America. However, growth was far below potential and much less than he 7-8 percent rates being achieved in some countries of East Asia and Latin America. Worst of all, the proportion of the Indian population below a (minimalist) poverty line actually increased from 45 to 51 percent (Table 3). Table 2: Economic Growth: Pre -independence (% per year) Year 1900-46 1900-29 1930-46 GDP 0. 9 0. 9 0. 8 Population 0. 8 0. 5 1. 3 Per Capita GDP 0. 1 0. 4 -0. 5 Source: Sivasubramonian (2000) 2 Table 3: Percentage of People Below Poverty Line, 1951-52 t o 1999-00: Official Estimates Year Rural Urban All India 1951-52 47. 4 35. 5 45. 3 1977-78 3. 1 45. 2 51. 3 1983 45. 7 40. 8 44. 5 1993-94 37. 3 32. 4 36. 0 1999-2000 26. 8 24. 1 26. 1 Source: Planning Commission, Government of India G rowth accelerated significantly in the 1980s to 5. 6 percent, entailing a more than doubling of per capita growth to 3. 4 percent a year. This acceleration was due to a number of factors, including: the early efforts at industrial and trade liberalization and tax reform dur ing the 1980s, a step- up in public investment, better agricultural performance and an increasingly expansionist (almost profligate! ) fiscal policy.Fiscal controls weakened and deficits mounted and spilled over to the external sector, requiring growing recourse to external borrowing on commercial terms. Against a background of a low export/GDP ratio, rising trade and current account deficits and a deteriorating external debt profile, the 1990 Gulf War and consequent oil price spik e tipped India’s balance of payments into crisis in 1990/91. Although the policy reforms of the 1980s were modest in comparison to those undertaken in the ensuing decade, their productivity â€Å"bang for the buck† seems to have been high (see Table 4) 2 .Perhaps this 2 Several different factor productivity studies support this conclusion, including: Acharya-Ahluwalia Krishna-Patnaik (2003), Bosworth and Collins (2003) and Virmani (2004). 3 w as a case of modest improvements in a highly distorted policy environment yielding significant gains. Table 4: Growth of GDP, Total Factor Input and Total Factor Productivity (% per year) 1950/511966/67 3. 8 GDP 1967/68 – 1981/82– 1980/81 1990/91 3. 4 5. 3 1991/92 – 1999/2000 6. 5 Total Factor Input (TFI) 2. 4 2. 7 3. 3 3. 9 Total Factor Productivity (TFP) . 4 0. 7 2. 0 2. 6 Proportion of Growth Explained by TFP (%) 37. 6 20. 8 37. 7 39. 7 Source: Acharya, Ahluwalia, Krishna and Patnaik (2003). Note: For each sub-period, GDP, TFI and TFP are trend growth rates. The new Congress government of June 1991, with Manmohan Singh as finance minister, undertook emergency measures to restore external and domestic confidence in the economy and its management. 3 The rupee was devalued, the fiscal deficit was cut and special balance of payments financing mobilized from the IMF and the World Bank.Even more importantly, the government seized the opportunity offered by the crisis to launch an array of long overdue and wide-ranging economic reforms. They encompassed external sector liberalization, deregulation of industry, reforms of taxation and the financial sector and a more commercial approach to the public sector (see Table 5 for a summary of key reforms in 1991-93). 4 3 There has been a great deal written on India’s economic reforms and the consequent performance of the economy, including Acharya (2002a and 2004), Ahluwa lia (2002), Kelkar (2004), Kochhar et. l (2006), Panagariya ( 2004a and 2006) and Virmani (2004). There is a tendency to view the post-1991 economic performance as a single unified experience. I prefer the more nuanced and disaggregated view outlined here. 4 As I have pointed out elsewhere (Acharya, 2006a), these reforms are better characterized as â€Å"medium bang† than â€Å"gradualist† (as by Ahluwalia, 2002). 4 Table 5: Main Economic Reforms of 1991-93 Fiscal †¢ Reduction of the fiscal deficit. †¢ Launching of reform of major tax reforms. External Sector †¢ Devaluation and transition to a Market-determined Exchange Rate. Phased reduction of import licensing (qua ntitative restrictions). †¢ Phased reduction of peak custom duties. †¢ Policies to encourage direct and portfolio foreign investment. †¢ Monitoring and controls over external borrowing, especially short term. †¢ Build-up of foreign exchange reserves. †¢ Amendment of FERA to reduce restrictions on firms. Industry †¢ Virtual abolitio n of industrial licensing. †¢ Abolition of separate permission needed by â€Å"MRTP houses†. †¢ Sharp reduction of industries â€Å"reserved† for the public sector. †¢ Freer access to foreign technology.Agriculture †¢ More remunerative procurement prices for cereals. †¢ Reduction in protection to the manufacturing sector. Financial Sector †¢ Phasing in of Basle prudential norms. †¢ Reduction of reserve requirements for banks (CRR and SLR). †¢ Gradual freeing up of interest rates. †¢ Legislative empowerment of SEBI. †¢ Establishment of the National Stock Exchange. †¢ Abolition of government control over capital issues. Public Sector †¢ Disinvestment programme begun. †¢ Greater autonomy / accountability for public enterprises. 5The economy responded swiftly and positively to these reforms. After virtual stagnation in 1991/92, GDP growth surged in the next five years to clock a record 5-year average of 6. 7 percent. It is noteworthy that in this high growth Eighth Plan period all major sectors (agriculture, industry, services) grew noticeably faster than in the pre-crisis decade. The acceleration in the growth of agricultural value added is particularly interesting in the light of oft-repeated criticism that the economic reforms of the early nineties neglected the agricultural sector.The factors which explain this remarkable and broad-based growth surge in the period 1992-97 appear to include: †¢ †¢ †¢ †¢ †¢ †¢ †¢ Productivity gains resulting from the deregulation of trade, industry and finance, especially in the sectors of industry and some services; The surge in export growth at about 20 percent per year (in dollar terms) for three successive years beginning 1993-94, attributable to the substantial devaluation in real effective terms in the early nineties and a freer policy regime for industry, foreign trade and payments;The investment boom of 1993- 96 which exerted expansionary effects on both supply and demand, especially in industry. The investment boom itself was probably driven by a combination of factors including the unleashing of ‘animal spirits’ by economic reforms, the swift loosening of the foreign exchange bottleneck, confidence in broadly consistent governmental policy signals and easier availability of investible funds (both through borrowing and new equity issues);The partial success in fiscal consolidation, which kept a check on government borrowings and facilitated expansion of aggregate savings and investments; Improvement in the terms of trade for agriculture resulting from a combination of higher procurement prices for important crops and reduction in trade protection for manufactures; Availability of capacity in key infrastructure sectors, notably power; A buoyant world economy which supported expansion of foreign trade and private capital inflows.The momentum of growth slowed noticeably in the Ninth Plan period, 1997-2002, to an average of 5. 5 percent, compared to the 6. 7 percent achieved in the previous five years. Among the factors which contributed to this deceleration were: the significant worsening of the fiscal deficits (mainly due to large public pay increases following the Fifth Pay Commission) and the associated decline in public savings, the slackening of economic reforms after 1995 as coalition governance became the norm, a significant slowdown in 6 gricultural growth for a variety of reasons, a marked downswing in the industrial cycle and an increasingly unsupportive international economic environment (including the Asian financial crisis of 1997-98, rising energy prices and the global recession of 2001). Indeed, India’s economic growth in 1997-2002 might have been even weaker but for the unexpected and somewhat inexplicable strength of services sector growth, which clocked an average of 8. 2 percent, despite industrial growth of only 4. 4 percent. T he services sector accounted for almost 70 percent of all growth in this period. Economic reforms picked up pace in 2000-04, fiscal deficits trended down after 2002 and the world economy rebounded strongly in 2002-06. These factors supported a broadbased upswing in Indian industrial output and investment from the second half of 2002. Growth of industrial valued added surged to 8 percent in 2002-06. With continued strong growth of services (at nearly 9 percent), GDP growth climbed to average 7 percent, despite continued sluggishness of agriculture.In the three years, 2003-06 overall economic growth has averaged over 8 percent and the outlook for 2006/7 is equally bright. This latest economic surge has raised the interesting issue of whether India’s trend growth rate has accelerated to 8 percent (or higher) from its previous level of around 6 percent. The ensuing sections of this paper explore this question. II. Main drivers of Recent Economic Growth What are some of the main i ngredients of the recent surge in economic growth? I would suggest the following seven major elements: ) The momentum of a quarter of a century of strong economic growth; 2) A much more open economy (to external trade and investment); 3) A growing â€Å"middle class† fuelling domestic consumption; 4) The â€Å"demographic dividends† of a young population; 5 Acharya (2002a and 2003) noted this unusual phenomenon and raised questions about both the quality of the data and the durability of such sharply divergent growth rates of industry and services. More recently, similar doubts have been expressed by Bosworth-Collins -Virmani (2006). 7 5) Strong companies in a modernized capital market; 6) Some recent economic reforms. ) A supportive international economic environment. Let me elaborate briefly on each of these factors. The Momentum of Growth The last thirty years’ experience suggests that very few developing countries have sustained decent per capita growth for two decades or more (Acharya, 2006b). Specifically, out of 117 developing countries with population over half a million, only 12 countries achieved per capita growth of more than 3 percent per year in 1980-2002, with at least 2 percent growth in each decade of the eighties and nineties. These twelve countries were: China (8. 2), Vietnam (4. 6), South Korea (6. 1), Chile (3. ), Mauritius (4. 4), Malaysia (3. 4), India (3. 6), Thailand (4. 6), Bhutan (4. 3), Sri Lanka (3. 1), Botswana (4. 7) and Indonesia (3. 5). (The number falls to 9 if we specify a minimum population of 3 million). Nine of these 12 countries are in Asia and, fortunately, they include the three most populous: China, India and Indonesia. (See Table 6). If we take the full 25 years (1981-2006), India’s per capita growth has averaged 3. 8 percent or almost 4 percent per year. 8 Table 6: Good Growth Performers of Recent Decades Average Annual Per Capita Growth (%) Country 1980-2002 1990s 1980s Population in 2000 (Millions) 1. China . 2 8. 6 7. 7 1262 2. Vietnam 4. 6 5. 7 1. 9 78 3. South Korea 6. 1 5. 0 7. 4 47 4. Chile 3. 3 4. 3 2. 1 15 5. Mauritius 4. 4 4. 1 4. 9 1 6. Malaysia 3. 4 3. 7 3. 1 23 7. India 3. 6 3. 6 3. 6 1016 8. Thailand 4. 6 3. 4 6. 0 61 9. Bhutan 4. 3 3. 4 5. 4 1 10. Sri Lanka 3. 1 3. 1 3. 1 18 11. Botswana 4. 7 2. 7 7. 2 2 12. Indonesia 3. 5 2. 6 4. 4 206 Source: World Bank (2005) Sustained improvements in standards of living of this order embody their own growthreinforcing elements. People come to think more positively about the future and base their savings, investment and production decisions on an expectation of continued growth.Electorates in India’s democracy come to expect development and hold government performance to higher standards, despite disappointments. Companies think big when they invest. And so on. A More Open Economy The Indian economy in 2006 is far more open to external trade, investment and technology than it was fifteen years ago. 6 Table 7 p resents some key comparative 6 The story of India’s external liberalization may be found in several places, including Acharya (2002b) and Panagariya ( 2004b). 9 indicators. Peak import duties on manufactures have come down from over 200% to 12. 5%, a remarkable reduction by any standards.The regime of tight, detailed and discretionary import controls has been almost completely dismantled. The exchange rate was devalued and made market-responsive (1991-3). The policies towards foreign portfolio and direct investment have been greatly liberalized. As a result, the ratio of traded goods to GDP has more than doubled from less than 15 percent to nearly 33 percent. Because of the sustained boom in software exports and worker remittances, the ratio of current receipts (goods exports plus gross invisibles) has more than tripled from 8 percent to over 24 percent of GDP.Foreign investment has risen from negligible levels to US $ 20 billion in 2005/6. Table 7: Towards A More Open Econom y 1990/91 2005/06 200% plus 12. 5% Tight, detailed Almost gone Trade (goods) / GDP Ratio (%) 14. 6 32. 7 Current Receipts / GDP (%) 8. 0 24. 5 Software Exports ($ billion) Nil 23. 6 Worker Remittances ($ billion) 2. 1 24. 6 Foreign Investment ($ billion) Negligible 20. 2 2. 2 145. 1 35. 3 10. 2 Peak Import Duties (manufacturers) I mport Controls Foreign Currency Reserves ($ billion, March 31) Debt Service Ratio (%) Source: RBI, Annual Report, 2005 /06, except for first two rows.After initial periods of sometimes painful adjustment in the 1990s, Indian industry has thrived in the more open and competitive environment. The explosion in software ITenabled service exports is well-known, having risen from nil in 1991 to $ 24 billion in 2005/6. Anecdotal evidence suggests that small-scale units have benefited greatly from 10 the much freer access to traded raw materials, components and designs. Perhaps most important, the old mindset of â€Å"foreign exchange scarcity† (and the wel ter of bad economic policies it spawned) has been effectively banished.Interestingly, the â€Å"opening up† has also strengthened the prudential yardsticks of foreign exchange reserves and debt service ratios. Rise of strong companies in a modernized capital market The 1990s ushered in far-reaching reforms in India’s capital markets. The Securities and Exchange Board of India was statutorily empowered in 1992 and quickly moved to improve standards of disclosure and transparency. The new electronic-tradebased National Stock Exchange was established in 1993 and set high technical and governance standards, which soon had to be emulated by the much older (and, sometimes scam-hit) Bombay Stock Exchange.Depositories legislation was enacted and soon paperless trading became the norm. Brokers were encouraged to corporatize. Futures markets were nurtured. These and other reforms transformed Indian capital markets into one of the best in the developing world. The combination of a modernizing capital market, an increasingly liberal and competitive environment for investment, trade and production, a wealth of entrepreneurial talent and sustained economic growth has helped the rise of strong new companies and supported the expansion of the more agile and aggressive among the established firms.By way of example, Airtel, the leading private telecom, went from nothing to a multi-billion dollar company in a decade. The same was true for the leading domestic airline, Jet and the IT icons like Infosys, Wipro, TCSand HCL. Old pharma companies, like Ranbaxy, transformed themselves. New media companies like Zee and NDTV bloomed. Established corporates houses restructured and flourished (such as some Tata companies, Reliance, Bajaj, Mahindra and Hero Honda) or saw their market shares decline.In recent years quite a few Indian companies have expanded through overseas investments and acquisitions, facilitated by direct investments abroad averaging $1. 5 to $ 2 billion in the past five years. The recent bid for Corus by Tata Steel is a well-publicized example. 11 Aggregate financial data also point to the strength and expansion of India’s corporate sector in recent years. The market capitalization of companies listed on the Bombay Stock Exchange rose nearly 14-fold from $ 50 billion in 1990/91 to $ 680 billion in 2005/6 (Table 8).In the last five years, the growth of profits has outpaced the growth of sales of private corporates, indicating rising profit margins. With falling interest rates and growing recourse to internal funding, the share of interest outgo in gross profits dropped sharply from above 50 percent in the late 1990s to 15 percent in 2005/6 (Reserve Bank, 2006, Box 1. 7). Unsurprisingly, data for the top 1000 listed companies showed net profits as percent of net sales rising from 4. 5 % in 2001/2 to 8. 9 % in 2004/5 (Business Standard, 2006). Table 8: Rising Middle Class 1990/91 Cars + UVs sold # Two Wheelers sold #Telephone [em ail  protected] (million) 15 million 100 million $50 billion $680 billion 205 thousand People in households with income (Rs. 2,00,000 – 10,00,000 OR PPP $20,000- $1,00,000 approximately)a Bombay Stock Exchange Market Capitalisation* 2005/06 1319 thousand 1800 thousand 7570 thousand 5 125$ a Based on data from NCAER (2005) * RBI, Handbook of Statistics on the Indian Economy, 2005-06 # Business Beacon, CMIE and Monthly Review of the Indian Economy, CMIE, October 2006 @ Business Beacon CMIE and Economic Survey, 2005-06 $ December 2005 A Growing Middle Class In the mid-1990s, shortly after the major economic reforms of 1991-4, there as premature exuberance about India’s rising middle class and their acquisitive aspirations. Today there is a much firmer basis for emphasizing the importance of the growing middle class in transforming consumption, production and investment in the Indian economy. Table 8 provides a few indicators. Based on surveys by the NCAER, about 100 mil lion people now live in households with annual incomes between Rs. 200,000 and Rs 1 12 million (approximately PPP$ 20,000 to 100,000), compared to about 15 million in 1990/91. With a lower defining threshold, the size of the middle class would be greater.For example, if the middle class cut-off is defined as the â€Å"non-poor† by standards of developed economies, then Bhalla (2007) estimates that 34 percent of India ’s population was â€Å"middle class† in 2005 compared to about 10 percent in 1990. Purchases of iconic middle class consumption items have certainly soared in the last 15 years (Table 8). Annual sales of cars (including multi- utility vehicles) have risen more than six times to 1. 3 million in 2005/6. Two wheeler sales have increased mo re than four times to 7. 6 million in 2005/6. In 1990/91 India had just 5 million telephone connections (all fixed).By the end of 2005 the number was 125 million (about two-thirds were mobile connections). Indeed, i n October 2006 the new mobile connections were close to 7 million, more than the total of phone connections fifteen years ago! The Demographic Dividend It has become commonplace to emphasize the growth potential of India’s young population and declining dependency ratio. According to most population projections the share of working age population in total population will continue to rise for the next 30 years or so, long after the decline has set in other major countries like China, USA, Western Europe and Japan (Table 9).These demographics point to a large potential for higher growth through augmented supply of labour and savings. Indeed, these trends have already been at work over the 15 years or so, helping to raise India’s household savings from around 15-16 percent of GDP in the late 1980s to 22-24 percent in recent years. 7 7 This could be an important part of the explanation to the puzzle: How does India sustain high growth despite aggregate fiscal deficits abov e 7 percent of GDP over the last twenty years? 13 Table 9: Share of Working Population (15-59 yrs) Country 1950 1975 2000 2025 2050 India 55. 5 54. 0 58. 9 64. 3 59. 7 China 59. 53. 6 65. 0 62. 1 53. 8 Japan 56. 9 64. 0 62. 1 52. 8 45. 2 US 60. 5 60. 0 62. 1 56. 6 54. 6 Western Europe 61. 7 58. 1 61. 3 54. 8 50. 4 Source: http://www. un. org/esa/population/publications/worldageing19502050/countriesorareas. htm Some Recent Policies As noted above economic reforms slowed after 1995 and then revived to some extent in the period 2000-04. Also, real interest rates declined worldwide and in India too. In India this may have been helped by renewed efforts to reduce burgeoning fiscal deficits, including through enactment of the Fiscal Responsibility and Budget Management Act (2003) at the central level.The fiscal position of the States also improved from the dire straits plumbed following the Fifth Pay Commission. The states too adopted fiscal responsibility laws following the recommendatio ns (and conditional debt write-offs) of the Twelfth Finance Commission (Government of India, 2004). Furthermore, tax revenues at both levels of government were buoyed by resurgent economic (especially industrial) growth after 2002/3. The net result was a decline in the gross fiscal deficit from almost 10 percent of GDP in 2001/2 to 7. percent in 2004/5 and an even larger decline in the revenue deficit from 7 to 3. 7 percent of GDP (Table 10). This was the single most important factor explaining the increase in aggregate savings from around 24 percent of GDP in 2001/2 to 29 percent in 2004/5, which, in turn, helped finance the current investment boom. 14 Table 10: Deficits, Savings and Investment (as % of GDP) Year 1995-96 Gross Fiscal Deficit 2001-02 2004-05 6. 5 9. 9 7. 5 3. 2 7. 0 3. 7 25. 1 (-2. 0) 26. 9 23. 6 (-6. 0) 23. 0 29. 1 (-2. 7) 30. 1 (Centre and States) Revenue Deficit (Centre and States)Gross Domestic Savings (of which Government) Gross Domestic Investment Source: RBI, Handbook of Statistics on the Indian Economy, 2005-06 and CSO website †¢ †¢ (http://mospi. nic. in/mospi_cso_rept_pubn. htm ) (http://mospi. nic. in/mospi_press_releases. htm ) International Economic Environment Despite the war in Iraq and the high oil prices of recent years the world economy has grown at almost 5 percent over the last four years, propelled by strong growth in US and China and some recovery in Japan and Europe. World trade in goods and services has expanded rapidly.This favorable environment has helped rapid growth of exports (of goods and services) from India, which, in turn, has been a significant driver of economic growth in this recent period. 8 III Risks to Future Strong Growth There are some well-known risks or constraints to the sustenance of the 8 percent growth enjoyed by India since 2003. These include: 1) Renewed fiscal stress from populist policies; 8 Panagariya (2006) emphasizes this point. 15 2) Infrastructure bottlenecks; 3) Labour market r igidities; 4) Weak performance of agriculture; 5) Pace of economic reforms; ) Weaknesses in human resource development programmes; 7) The international economic environment. Each of these merit brief elaboration. Populism and Renewed Fiscal Stress The recent progress in fiscal consolidation, noted above, is real but modest. The overall fiscal deficit remains high at 7. 5 percent of GDP in 2005/6, as does the government debt to GDP ratio at 80 percent (compared to about 60 percent in 1995/6). While the fiscal responsibility laws enacted by central and state governments (22 out of 28 states have passed such laws so far) are promising, they are not immune to populist pressures.Especially since the advent of the UPA government in 2004, populist expenditure programmes, such as the National Rural Employment Guarantee scheme, have gained fresh momentum. The Sixth Pay Commission has been constituted and is expected to submit its report by mid-2008, with governmental action likely before the next general election. The possibility of significant public pay increases is obviously high. On the revenue side, the state level VATs have contributed to revenue buoyancy. But the recent scheme for Special Economic Zones is fraught with unduly generous tax concessions.So the prospects for fiscal consolidation are mixed, at best. Infrastructure Bottlenecks India’s infrastructure problems are legendary and also reflect failures in public sector performance and governance. A recent appraisal (World Bank, 2006) points out that â€Å"the average manufacturer loses 8. 4 percent in sales annua lly on account of power 16 outages†, over 60 percent of Indian manufacturing firms own generator sets (compared to 27 percent in China and 17 percent in Brazil) and India’s combined real cost of power is almost 40 percent higher than China’s. The quantity and quality of roads is also a serious bottleneck.While there has been some progress in recent years with national h ighway development, the state and rural road networks are woefully inadequate, especially in poorer states (Figure 1). Urban infrastructure (especially water and sewerage) is another major constraint for rapid industrial development and urbanization (Figure 2). The successful example of rapid telecom development is very promising. But unlike telecom, the sectors of power, roads and urban infrastructure are burdened by long histories of a subsidy culture and dual (centre and states) constitutional responsibilities.Unless the various infrastructure constraints are addressed swiftly and effectively, it is difficult to see how 8 percent (or higher) economic growth can be sustained. Fig 1:Percentage of habitations not connected by roads, by Indian state Haryana Kerala Andhra Pradesh Punjab 0% 3% 4% 7% Karnataka 8% Tamil Nadu 8% Maharashtra Gujarat Uttar Pradesh Rajasthan 12% 23% 43% 51% Bihar 58% Orissa 58% Jharkhand Madhya Pradesh West Bengal 59% 62% 69% Chattisgarh 82% Source: Ministry of Rural Development, Government of India, as cited in World Bank (2006). 17 Fig 2: Percentage of the population with access to sewerage facilities, by Indian stateRajasthan 8 Orissa 9 Chattisgarh 10 Madhya Pradesh 10 Andhra Pradesh 15 West Bengal 17 Tamil Nadu 29 Karnataka 33 Uttar Pradesh 37 Uttaranchal 37 Maharashtra 49 Gujarat 63 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 Source: Central Public Health and Environmental Engineering Organization, 2000, as cited in World Bank (2006). Labour Market Rigidities According to official data, India’s non-agricultural employment in the private organized (units employing more than 10 workers) sector has stagnated below 9 million for over 20 years, although the labour force has grown to exceed 400 million!A major cause has been India’s complex and rigid labour laws, which hugely discourage fresh employment while protecting those with organized sector jobs. 9 Investment climate surveys by the World Bank indicate that India has some of the most res trictive labour laws in the world, which, in effect convert labour (in organized units) into a fixed factor of production (lay-offs are extremely difficult) and thereby discourage fresh employment in the organized sector while promoting more â€Å"casualization† and insecurity among the 9The skill and capital-intensive pattern of development of India’s modern industrial and services sectors (despite the endowment of abundant unskilled labour) has been noted by many analysts, including Kochhar et. al. (2006), Panagariya (2006) and World Bank (2006). All of them point to restrictive labour laws as a major culprit. 18 93 percent of workers in the unorganized sector. The laws are not just rigid but also numerous (â€Å"a typical firm in Maharashtra has to deal with 28 different acts pertaining to labor†, World Bank, 2006).Without significant reform of existing labour laws, India’s cheap labour advantages remain hugely underutilized. Looking to the future, the challenge will increase as the â€Å"demographic dividend† brings further large increases in the labour force. In fact, as I have pointed out elsewhere (Acharya, 2004), the economic and political challenge is far greater than normally appreciated because the bulk of the demographic bulge will occur (in the next few decades) in the poor, slow-growing and populous states of central and eastern India (notably, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Orissa and Madhya Pradesh).Weak Agricultural Performance Since 1996/97 the growth of agriculture has dropped to barely 2 percent, compared to earlier trend rate ranging between 2. 5- 3. 0 percent. The reasons are many and include declining public investment by cash-strapped states, grossly inadequate maintenance of irrigation assets, f lling water tables, inadequate rural road networks, a unresponsive research and extension services, soil damage from excessive urea use (encouraged by high subsidies), weak credit delivery and a distorted incentive str ucture which impedes diversification away from food grains.Tackling these problems and revitalising agriculture will take time, money, understanding and political will. It will also require much greater investments in (and maintenance of) rural infrastructure of irrigation, roads, soil conservation, etc. and reinvigoration of the present systems of agricultural research and extension. While the central government can play a significant role in revamping systems, the main responsibility for strengthening rural infrastructure lies with the states. However, their financial and administrative capabilities have weakened over time. The share of agriculture in GDP has declined to hardly 20 percent.But agriculture is still the principal occupation of nearly 60 percent of the labour force. Thus better performance of this sector is essential for poverty alleviation and containment of rising regional and income inequalities. 19 Pace of Economic Reforms There is little doubt that economic refor ms have slowed since the UPA government assumed office in May 2004 10 . The privatization programme has been halted, although Government remains the dominant owner in banking, energy and transport and the usual ills of public ownership afflict the performance of many enterprises in these key sectors.The legislative proposals of the previous government to reduce government ownership in public sector banks to 33 percent have lapsed and not been renewed. There has been some revival of interest rate controls and directed credit. Follow-up action on the reformist new Electricity Act (2003) passed by the NDA government has been slow. The pricing of petroleum products has become more politically administered than before. Education policy has focused on introducing caste-based reservations in institutions of higher education. Introduction of such reservations in private sector employment are also being considered.Reform of labour laws remains stalled. There has been little forward progress in reform of agriculture policies. Indeed, the wonder is that the economy’s growth momentum has remained so strong despite the stalling of economic reforms. If the growth dividends of econo mic reforms occur with a lag, then the paucity of reforms in the period 2004-06 may take their toll in the years ahead. Weak Human Resource Policies The long-run performance of the Indian economy must surely depend on successful policies and programmes f r education, skill-development and health service o rovision. Yet the government- led programmes in these sectors suffer from very serious weaknesses and lack of reform impetus. For example, World Bank (2006) cites a number of surveys which show that less than half of government teachers and health workers are actually to be found in schools and clinics they are serving (the situation is typically worse in poorer states) . Even though school enrolment rates have climbed over time, the actual cognitive skill acquired in schools (even simple reading and arithmetic) is still very 10 For a recent review see Acharya (2006c). 0 low (Pratham, 2006). In health, a survey shows that medics in primary health clinics in Delhi had a greater than 50 percent chance of prescribing a harmful therapy for specified, common ailments (Das and Hammer, 2004a and 2004b). The competence of these medics was found to be less than comparably situated counterparts in Tanzania and substantially worse than counterparts in Indonesia. Even in higher education, an area of supposed competence, studies point to enormous problems of quality, quantity and relevance (see, for example, Aggarwal, 2006).Quite clearly, the current portfolio of policies and programmes in these critical sectors need urgent improvement if India is to retain her competitive edge in an increasingly globalized, knowledge-based, world economy. International Economic Environment The latter half of 2006 has witnessed a distinct slowing in the growth of the US economy, still the single most potent locomotive of global growth. The Doha Round of multilateral trade liberalization remains mired in limbo. Oil prices, though off their peaks, remain high with little prospect of falling below $50 a barrel.The chances of some slackening in the growth of world output and trade are clearly rising. Just as the Indian economy has benefited from strong global expansion in the last four years, so it may expect to bear some downside risks from slower world growth in the years ahead. IV Medium Term Growth Prospects Since 2003/4 there have been quite a few studies projecting sustained, high growth of the Indian economy in the long-run, including the Goldman Sachs â€Å"BRICs† report (Wilson-Purushothaman, 2003), Rodrik-Subramanian (2004) and Kelkar (2004).Their specific projections and time-periods differ: Goldman Sachs foresaw near 6 percent growth for 50 years; Rodrik-Subramanian projected a minimum of 7 percent for the next 20 years and Kelkar was even more optimistic wi th his growth expectation of 10 percent. 11 More recently, with a three-year 8 percent average already achieved and the 11 See Acharya (2004) for a critical assessment of these bullish growth expectations. 21 current year likely to register a similar rate, the Government’s Planning Commission (2006) has outlined GDP growth projections for 2007/8-2011/12 of 8 to 9 percent.Bhalla (2007, forthcoming) goes further and foresees 10 percent growth as almost inevitable. Most probably, the majority of serious economists in India would today expect economic growth in the medium term (say, 2007-12) to average at least 8 percent. Such optimism is not wholly misplaced. It is based on the continuing strength of the positive factors outlined in section II above, especially globalization and â€Å"catch-up†, the demographic dividends, the rising middle class, a vibrant entrepreneurial culture, positive expectations of future economic reforms and a generally benign international econom ic environment.The optimists are not blind to the risks and threats outlined in section III. They simply expect the growth-enhancing tendencies to prevail or, more subtly, for the dynamics of growth to generate solutions to constraints such as infrastructure and education. Figure 3 provides encouragement to the bullish outlook. 22 Figure 3: India's GDP Growth 8 7 Percentage 6 5 4 3 2 1 2006-07 2003-04 2000-01 1997-98 1994-95 1991-92 1988-89 1985-86 1982-83 1979-80 1976-77 1973-74 1970-71 1967-68 1964-65 1961-62 1958-59 1955-56 0 Year Rolling Average (5 year)In my view, the downside factors outlined in section III, should carry more weight in assessing India’s medium term growth prospects. There is a good chance that the currently bullish view of growth expectations is overly influenced by the recent past (2003 onwards), a period of strong cyclical upswing in both the global economy and Indian industry. The strength of the cycle could abate in the next couple of years and Indi a’s growth could revert to a trend rate in the range of 6 to 7 percent, perhaps closer to the higher figure.Even then, under this â€Å"pessimistic† scenario, annual per capita growth would be at a historical peak for India (Table 11). If this is â€Å"pessimism†, then I plead guilty to the charge (though it does place me among a small minority of Indian economists today)! 23 Table 11: Medium Term Growth Expectations 1992/3 –2005/6 2002/3 -2006/7 2007/8 – 2011 /12 â€Å"Optimist† â€Å"Pessimist† GDP % 6. 4 7. 2 * 8 – 10 6. 5 – 7. 0 GDP per capita (%) 4. 4 5. 5 6. 5 – 8. 5 5 – 5. 5 * Assuming Reserve Bank projection of 8. percent GDP growth for 2006/7 Perhaps the most noteworthy point is that medium- term growth expectations for India are so buoyant that the range between optimists and pessimists is placed so high, within a fairly narrow band of about 7 to 9 percent. Only time will tell who is closer to bei ng right. V Some Implications of India’s Rise India’s growth at an average rate of almost 6 percent a year over the past quarter of a century (with per capita growth of nearly 4 percent a year) is both remarkable and commendable.Certainly, back in 1980, there was almost no respectable scholar or institution predicting such sustained development of this poverty-ridden, populous country. At the same time, the prevailing fashion of bracketing India’s rise with China’s exceptionally dynamic development under rubrics like â€Å"China and India Rising† may mask more than it reveals. If India’s development in the last 25 years has been good, China’s has been extraordinary. Furthermore, while India has been a gradual â€Å"globalizer†, China’s surging development has been far more intensively based on global trade and capital flows.As a consequence, the global economic impact of China’s rise has been much more dramatic in terms of the usual metrics of international economic relations: trade, capital flows and energy. A glance at Table 12 illustrates this obvious point. The comparison of columns 5 and 6 of the table is especially instructive. It highlights both the 24 dramatic increase in China’s engagement with the world economy over the five years 2000 to 2005, as well as the much milder rise in Ind ia’s international economic integration. For example, China’s goods exports increased by an amount which was five times the level of India’s total goods exports in 2005.Similarly, the increase in oil consumption in China was almost equal to India’s total oil consumption in 2005. Table12: China and India: Global Impact China India Increment (2000-05) 2000 (1) 2005 (2) 2000 (3) 2005 (4) China (5) India (6) 249. 1 762. 4 45. 5* 104. 7* 513. 3 59. 2 Share of World Exports (%)e 3. 9 7. 3 0. 7 0. 9 3. 4 0. 2 Service Exports ($ billion) a,b 30. 4 74. 4 16. 2* 60. 6* 44 44. 4 Current Account Balance ($ billion) a,b 20. 5 160. 8 -2. 7* -10. 6* 140. 3 -7. 6 Foreign Exchange Reserves ($ billion) a 165. 6 818. 9 37. 2 131. 0 653. 3 93. 8FDI inflow ($ billion)c 30. 1# 72. 4 1. 7# 6. 6 42. 3 4. 9 FDI stock (Inward, $ billion) c 193. 3 317. 9 17. 5 45. 3 124. 6 27. 8 Oil Consumption (million tonnes)d 223. 6 327. 3 106. 1 115. 7 103. 7 9. 6 Primary Energy Consumption (million tonnes oil equivalent) d 966. 7 1554. 0 320. 4 387. 3 587. 3 66. 9 Merchandise Exports ($ billion) a,b Note: * Data for India refer to fiscal year 2000-01 and 2005-06 # 1990-2000 (Annual Average) Sources: a International Financial Statistics, December 2006 (http://ifs. apdi. net/imf/) b RBI, Handbook of Statistics on the Indian

Comparing the ways Edgar Allen Poe and Bram Stoker convey horror through writing Essay

Through this essay you will see how although the writing style of Edgar Allen Poe in ‘The Black Cat’ and the style of Bram stoker in ‘The Judges House’ is completely different, they both manage to achieve the same effect – leaving the reader anxious, excited, mystified and scared. Both these authors stories were written before the nineteen hundreds, a time when people were just understanding the ways the world works. In this time horror stories were very popular. The perspective of both Poems is different. In The black cat Poe writes in a first person perspective: â€Å"Today I die and tomorrow I would unburden my soul†. Where as Stoker writes in a third person perspective: â€Å"Malcolm Malcolmson made up his mind†. The use of third person in this story displays the feelings of more than one character and you can build up more fear than first person by using devices such as rhetorical questions by other characters for example when Mrs Cranford cries â€Å"not the Judges house!† it creates the feeling of horror and helplessness. First person perspective makes you feel sorrow for the character. If Edgar Allen Poe had written the black cat in Third person perspective You wouldn’t get the emphasis of his emotions, how he feels regret of what he has done, fear of this new animal and superstitious about the strange imprint on the wall. For example, when he writes â€Å"gradually, very gradually I came to look up on it with unutterable loathing†. This really emphasises the hated of the animal, an emotion that would not have been able to have been shown to that extent in third person. It is also more believable as it is through the eyes of the beholder. At the start of the black cat Poe starts off very secretively, he writes of something horrible that has happened to him, but he will not expand on what this occurrence is: These events have terrified, tortured and destroyed me†. This suspense adds to the mystery of the first scene. Poe writes, â€Å"tomorrow I die† showing something horrible has happened to him. The fact that this is not in chronological order keep you wondering throughout the story what is going to happen and keeps you in suspense. It also keeps you trying to link the current storyline to death, for example, when it says about the new cat: â€Å"It was a black cat – a very large cat-fully as large as Pluto and closely resembling him† you are thinking how this new cat could be linked to his death. Stoker, however has a very different approach to build up mystery. He uses setting whereas Poe does not. When he describes the lodgings he describes it as a gothic residence: â€Å"with heavy gables and small windows set higher than was customary in such houses†. Gothic residences have always been associated with death and fear in horror movies. He describes the village as empty: â€Å"desolation was the only term for conveying a suitable idea of its isolation† the idea of a desolate empty place is the perfect setting for a horror story. The fact that the house has been empty for so long indicates something dreadful has happened there. The locals all seem to know something dreadful about the house. It seems that Malcolm is the only person who doesn’t know what’s going on there. When Mrs Cranford cries at him â€Å"not the judges house!† it creates a feeling of dread for what is going to happen to Mr Malcolmson. Poe uses superstition to add to the mystery. The first little bit of superstition is when he reveals that his wife believes that all black cats are witches in disguise. This brief, initial introduction of superstition creates mystery in your head, and it makes you think, ‘what if black cats are really witches in disguise.’ When the cat imprint appears on the wall, the character tries to dismiss the supernatural happening with a far fetched logical explanation. He tries to say that someone tossed the hanging corpse of the cat in through the window to try and wake him up. He then tried to say that because the wall was freshly spread plaster, it did not fall down. He said that the ammonia from the carcass had made the impression on the wall. Edgar Allen Poe had purposely made this string of events unbelievable so that the reader would know that there was something strange going on. I think that the imprint was a symbol that the cat was not dead and that it was an omen that it was going to come back to haunt him. The new cat was very suspicious, the fact that it looked a lot like Pluto made you think that it was a demonic symbol of Pluto. The cat gets more and more attached to him but he is reluctant to interact with it because he feels the supernatural element of this situation. He begins to hate the cat and the fact that it is always around him: â€Å"Its evident fondness for myself rather disgusted and annoyed me† but he wont harm the cat for fear of what will happen and regret of his previous crime: â€Å"at times although I longed to destroy it with a blow I was withheld from doing so partly by memory of my former crime but chiefly – let me confess it at once – by absolute dread of the beast†. The fact that it wont leave him alone, and that drives him madder and more angry makes it seem like the new cat is testing his willpower to leave it alone. His fear grows as the cat follows his every step. The only difference between Pluto and the new cat was a white splodge on its belly. It turns out later that this splodge is actually a image of gallows. The image grows in size until the character can clearly make out the image. his realisation of what this means is clearly shown in this quote â€Å"Gallows! – oh mournful and terrible engine of horror and crime – of agony and of death.† He has realised his fate – death. He feels remorse for what he had done to Pluto. He knows that this ‘beast’ is an image of Pluto. A symbol of god: â€Å"a brute beast to work out for me-for me, a man fashioned in the image of the high god – oh insufferable woe! He believes its is god in disguise of a cat† Stoker also uses supernatural elements. Every night the rats come out and make a lot of noise. They run up and down the alarm bell. They all stop suddenly a run away as a giant rat comes down the alarm bell. The rats are scared of this larger rat indicating that this rat is evil. Stokers description of the rat makes it sound evil: It showed its great white teeth and its cruel eyes shone in the lamplight. When Malcolmson throws a book at the creature to try and scare it, but it does not flinch. But when he throws a bible at the rat it scampers away. This indication of good/evil shows that the rat is evil. It is well known that Satanic beings such as this rat fear holy objects such as a bible and a cross. When Malcolmson realises that the rats eyes are identical to the picture of the Judge the figure of the judge disappears. He then turns round and sees the judge. The judge smiled in a cruel way: With his baleful eyes glaring vindictively, and a smile of triumph on his face† The judge does not say much in this last scene, I think this is important. Stoker did this so his character was not totally revealed. He remained a mysterious character. The descriptions of horror in The Black cat are very in depth: â€Å"I grasped the poor beast by its throat and purposely cut out one of its eyes from its socket.†. He doesn’t linger on this for long. These shock tactics really build up the horror in this story by making you feel horrified and shocked. Another example of this is when he kills his wife: â€Å"I withdrew my arm from her grasp, and buried the axe in her brain.† This again shows the shock tactics used when describing the horror scenes. His violence gets gradually worse. All his violence is triggered by anger or drink: â€Å"Through the instrumentality of the fiend intemperance had (I blush to confess it)experiences a radical alteration for the worst. I grew day by day more moody, more irritable regardless for the feeling of others. First he verbally abuses his wife, this turns to physical violence towards his wife and animals – except Pluto: â€Å"I suffered myself to use intemperate language towards my wife. At length I even offered her personal violence. My pets of course were made to feel the change in my disposition. I not only neglected, but ill-used them.† Then he cut out Pluto’s eye when he scrammed him on the face. This again is due to him drinking. Poe writes â€Å"one night, returning home much intoxicated†. The guilt of doing this to Pluto and the sadness that it once had loved him got to him and he hung the cat in cold blood: â€Å"I hung it with tears streaming from my eyes† this shows his remorse when hanging him. The guilt of what he had done prevented him from hurting the new cat, until one day when the cat nearly tripped him up in the cellar he grabbed and axe, but his wife prevented him from killing by grabbing the axe. He then split her head open with the axe. The violence gradually gets worse and worse, building up the horror as it goes along. Stoker uses less graphic description, but instead uses reactions of characters to create the fear: â€Å"not the judges house†. This, I think is one of the main advantages of introducing characters into the plot. A disadvantage is that it can take the focus of the main character. They both use pattering to create fear in their stories. In the Judges house the same thing happens every night. He drinks too much tea, then out came the rats making all the noise and finally they all stopped when the large rat emerged. This also happens in the black cat. His violent acts are all triggered by alcohol. Pattering creates suspense, which in turn makes you wonder how does this link with what is happening in the story. The two writers both use logical explanations to try and explain why these things are happening. In the black cat, The character makes up a ludicrous explanation to explain why there was an imprint on the wall. He tries to say that someone must have thrown the cat through the window in an attempt to wake him up. He says that the wall didn’t fall down because it had just been plastered and that the ammonia from the carcass has made the imprint on the wall. In The Judges house Malcolmson’s explanation for all the events that are happening is that he was drinking too much tea and it was making him delusional. Both of these are deliberately far fetched so that the reader knows that something super natural is going on. Stoker uses a more descriptive style in his writing. He describes the scene, the weather and the people in far more depth than Poe: â€Å"The carving of the oak on the panels of the wainscot was fine, and on and round the windows and doors it was beautiful and of rare merit†. I prefer the descriptive writing of Stoker because it creates an image in your mind. Especially with the weather. Stoker uses the weather to great effect. When the thunder was lashing down toy could tell something bad was going to happen. This effect is used in a lot of horror stories. In my opinion, I prefer Stokers method of creating horror. I think the introduction of characters brings in a new element to the story. It creates an atmosphere of bewilderment and isolation. I say isolation because everyone seemed to know what was going on but Mr Malcolmson. However, as a whole I think I preferred The Black cat by Edgar Allen Poe. I think this is because I am used to modern stories, and this storyline is a bit more advanced and modernised than The Judges House. As I am used to modern horror stories I can relate to this story better. I think that the plot has some realism to it, more so that Stoker’s story. I don’t think Stokers story was linked together very well and it all seemed a bit distant.

Causes and implications of child marriage in slums in Karachi Pakistan

Causes and implications of child marriage in slums in Karachi Pakistan This chapter includes basic background knowledge of research explaining the key elements of information which is the foundation for the study. The inclusion of reasons for conducting this research are discussed and a methodology write up as an introductory part of study is included and also incorporates a brief summary of limitations that came across in this research and a list of definitions for key word also included. Marriage refers as a â€Å"Mithaq† means a solemn covenant between a wife and a husband and this agreement would be in writing. In Islam and the Quran marriage is a contract. Since an agreement can only be reach in between two parties if they give free consent and such statement make clear that such a contract cannot be relate to children. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights declares that both these individuals must take this decision with a consent at legitimate age. Marriage is a pleasurable bond, a promise to live, matrimony of love and respect in between two souls. The aim of living a satisfying life gets ruined and however the way life thought to live doesn’t exist now and this all becomes reality when a child both a girl and boy forcibly subjected to do early marriage as UNICEF defined early marriage as Child Marriage if a marriage is practicing before the age of 18. UNICEF define early marriage that occur before the age of 18 years or Early marriages are defined as marriages under the age of eighteen. In a condition that an individual to be able to make own self think includes abstract thought process, take decisions and to let live life by taking responsibilities, individual should require to have certain level of mental and spiritual maturity which is physiologically equal to period which will continues till the age of eighteen. Marriage is encountered as a moment of celebration or a milestone in individual’s life but early marriages give no such reason for celebration and, a term child marriage is used to define as marriage or union that take place before 18 years of age, endangers the life trajectories of young girls in many ways, United Nation Children’s Fund (UNICEF) reported that up to 3% of girls before the age of 15 get married in Pakistan and 21% are married before turn to 18. These are the current statistics of the Pakistan Demographics and Health Survey done in 2012-1013. Child Marriage are forced marriage as one or both the partners without giving consent or marry without giving right to refuse.1956 Supplementary Slavery Convention called Child Marriage as Child slavery. Supplementary Slavery Convention recognize the following actions relating to females in context to marriage related to slavery and all have been reported in Child Marriage. The decision taking to promise or giving a female without giving her an authority to say no by her spouse or parents or in consideration with some financial incentives or in case of widow inheritance or associated that female with some values. The Law of child protection (3rd July 2005) said that, a child is a person who didn’t turn eighteen or even if he/she reached stage. UNICEF reported that woman aged 20 to 24 who were married before they were 18 year. A boy and a girl both victimized but girls get affected most as it takes away their emotional, physical and mental wellbeing and limits their childhood a nd decision making ability and mobility.  · Child Marriages is a serious violation of young girls human rights deeply rooted in Pakistani culture, customs and traditional practices.  · In Spite of being illegal by international law, this practice continues and strongly entrenched in sociocultural norms and continue to rob young girl’s childhood. Millions of girls depriving from their basic rights to health, to educate and to empower. Child Marriages denies young girl’s rights to make decisions for their health and wellbeing.  · A framework is needed that would facilitate better to advocates and understand policies and laws that perpetuate Child Marriages.  · In Pakistan Child Marriages incident rates are unknown because of the complexity of this issues and it may often shrouded at provincial level in a wall of silence.  · Child Marriage is a global issue that occur across countries, religions, ethnicities and cultures. Young girls victimized in every region throughout the world.  · If Child Marriages not reduced, around the world, cruel number of women who married as child will increase by 1.2 billion by 2050.In developing countries one in three girls get to married before the age of 18.today more than 700 million women were married as Child. The main objective for doing this research was to explore the immense long existed rationales of Child Marriage practicing in Pakistan. It analyze various religious, social, cultural, traditional, behavioral, economic and political aspects.  · To determine the prevalence and embedded trends of Child Marriage.  · To determine the causes exhibiting Child Marriage.  · To determine and comment on the implication and consequences related to Child Marriages. Very little research has been done on Child marriage prevailing causes and implication in Pakistan. This lack of research creating a knowledge gap that directly affects the work of governmental authorities and policy makers. With this present analysis will enable experts to necessitate to have more understanding of Child Marriage drivers across the globe. In December 2013 World Health Organization arranged meeting of group of experts in alliance with Girls not Bride and UNICEF to identify areas for research and addresses knowledge gap areas. Participants discussed them in relation to following areas  · Inter and intra country dissimilarity in child marriage trends and prevalence: It’s a globalize issue with varying rates within and among different countries. Researchers reported to explore specific segmented analysis in order to address diversity relating to Ethnicity, Geography, socio-economic and educational aspects  · Child Marriage consequences: As it is associated with early pregnancies (births to adolescent’s incidence are around 90% globally in context to child marriage) and child marriage evidence based impact on neonatal, child health and reproductive is expanding. Low level of understanding raising the consequences of domestic violence and mental health issues contributing developmental, gender and social equity outcomes  · Ways to Prevent Child Marriage in Effective Way: In 2011 ICRW done with systematic review of intervention give evidences that how this dilemma should we deal with but limited evaluations found with small number of countries but experts need to have some more attention to rethink how to react to many different drivers of this offensive act and scale more effective program to deal with There is no rigorous data available in Pakistan to make an estimate on number of child marriages as very few cases reported to police and governmental authorities does not menace this actTo identify the gaps associated with Child Marriages incidences and to propose a framework what we should need to do to fill this gap is required.To highlight the contributing factors related to government, society, culture, socioeconomic status and education and propose a framework as an action plan to overcome with it, so that government and regulatory bodies reframe laws and make policies that will help to restru ctured this problem. The research will be done in slums of Karachi, Pakistan. Definitions of key words using in this research are as follows, Poverty: It depends on your access to social services and on income level. In 1995 United Nation World Summit For Social Development define poverty is a state designated by rigorous deprivation of an individual basic human needs such as Health, education, food, shelter, safe drinking water, sanitation facilities. The World Bank describe an individual living on less than with US$ 1.90 per day and defines moderate poverty with less than US$ 3.10 per day. Child Marriages: In 2009 UNICEF define early marriage that occur before the age of 18 years It can be defined as a future action or reasoning evolved with Child Marriages while making any logical judgment that can be the basis for circumstantial evidence. Social Class: Homogenous group of individuals living in a society practicing common social values having similar life interest with enjoying equal position of respect in a society which is being constructed on conceptual structures education, occupation, income and place of residence. Social class can be categorized in Pakistan as Upper Class, Middle Class and Lower Class based on income levels. For income level of Rs 4,000 and less than 25,000were categorized as lower class.For income level of Rs 25,000 to 65,000 less per month were categorized as middle class. For income level of Rs 65,000 to 250,000 per month were categorized as Upper class. Family Honor: The stigma and family distress attached with parents and spouse to premarital sex and child bearing before marriage Social pressure: Define as if a girls left unmarried by the age 15 villagers, neighbors and family naive start making doubt her chastity and health well-being. Haq Mehr: It is defined as the amount of money which the wife is entitled for by her husband in Islam.

Ecological Modernisation as an approach for solving of Environmental Coursework

Ecological Modernisation as an approach for solving of Environmental problems - Coursework Example This study looks into the concept of ecological modernisation started to gain attention in the 1990s. This concept evolved in the industrialised democratic states as a dominant way of addressing environmental policies. It was also aimed at identifying the root causes of these environmental problems and to suggest possible policies or solutions. These environmental problems include global pollution, global warming, Ozone depletion, soil erosion, overpopulation, natural resources’ exploitation, destruction and fragmentation of natural habitats, water crisis, loss of biodiversities etc. These environmental problems are creating adverse effects on health and well-being of human beings. Ecological modernisation has been developed in order to fight against these environmental problems at large. It was also developed to ensure sustainability of natural resources and natural well-being, maintaining environmental justice and preserving the rights and beauty of the nature. The concept o f sustainability or sustainable development considers that the present generation must consume goods and services in such a way that the consumption of these goods and services by the future generation is not hampered. The notion of sustainable development has been used to preserve and conserve natural and environmental resources, mainly non-renewable resources like coal, petroleum etc. Sustainable use of these resources by the present generation can help future generations to acquire benefits from these resources. According to Brundtland Commission, it means ‘meeting the needs of the present without bargaining the capability of future generations to meet their needs (Berger et al., 2001, p.57). The concept of environmental justice deals with the preservation of the nature and natural resources. This paper is aimed at critically assess the importance of ecological modernisation as an appropriate approach for solving environmental problems. Brief history of the concept of ecolo gical modernisation: Since a long time, a conflicting relationship exists between economic development and environmental sustainability. There are conflicting opinions regarding the relationship between economic growth and environmental policies as well. Those people in favour of rapid economic growth and development argue that the policies aimed to act in favour of the environmental protections are creating obstacles against the economic growth of industrialised nations of the world. They have argued that environmental policies like reducing environmental pollution create larger problems for producers to produce goods and services at lowest possible costs and hence, hamper the process of economic development of countries by reducing their national output and national income (Berger et al., 2001, p.56). But the opposite side argues that without proper environmental protection it will be difficult for these industrialised countries to achieve their desired pace of economic growth. Th ey also argue that in the presence of sustained ecological society the pace of economic growth gets accelerated. The need for environmental awareness started at the end of the 1980s and at the beginning of the 1990s, mainly in the industrialised nations of the world. In this time the concept of environmental protection and environmental awareness was seen differently from previous periods. Before this time environmental problems were largely seen as natural phenomena which were beyond the control of human beings. But in this time people started to believe that those environmental problems are largely dependent upon human activities. People also realised that controlled and protected human activities can easily reduce the prevalence of those environmental problems. The main reason for the conceptualized difference was the emergence of a new concept called

Recommendation for London Business School Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Recommendation for London Business School - Essay Example This will give readers an understanding of why it is that you are qualified in recommending Gregor. Why do you think the applicant would be a good fit for the MiF programme at London Business School?* I had the pleasure of working with Gregor for one year in a team specialised in Equities. During this time, I observed Gregor as a hardworking, highly motivated and enthusiastic individual. From the beginning of his career within Bloomberg, he was involved in different interest groups such as, Launchpad Group, where he quickly became the central point of contact regarding the global implementation of this function. He was soon training the Analytics Department and actively involved in the recruitment process, carrying out interviews for the candidates and becoming a highly respected mentor for the new employees. I am convinced that Gregor would be a good fit for the MiF programme since he has professionally demonstrated the necessary skills to be successful at LBS such as, leadership, enthusiasm and analytical thinking. Due to his impressive language skills (he is fluent in English, German, Polish and Spanish) Gregor is able to communicate and work in an international setting, characterizing the work environment at LBS. The experience he has gained in well-known multinational companies in different European countries, allows him to understand customer needs and provide tailored solutions related to financial queries. The best testimony for Gregor’s abilities is the numerous positive comments he has received from our clients, admirably highlighting both his professionalism and the great attitude he will bring to class discussions at LBS. Besides the outstanding level of professionalism, Gregor also has a proactive and hardworking character aptly demonstrated when participating in student and work groups at our school. Thanks to his numerical skills, which he displayed by preparing weekly statistics regarding team productivity, and excellent financial knowledge demonstrated when dealing with high profile clients from the Finance Industry, he is perfectly equipped to be successful in the MiF Programme. To summarize, I highly recommend Gregor for the MiF Programme at LBS based on my own experience with this programme and excellent experience I gained by working directly with Gregor. His enthusiasm, knowledge and outstanding character make him a perfect candidate and a good fit for London Busin ess School. How do you think the applicant would contribute to: 1) The study group and classroom environment* Gregor has a very good understanding of financial concepts based on his studies and work in the financial environment. This allows him to approach complex problems and communicate solutions in a structured and logical way. Moreover, he is keen to learn and is not afraid to ask questions which will be of advantage in classroom discussions. His international experience, friendly disposition and hardworking character will allow him to adapt easily to any study group and contribute immensely to the team results. 2) Student clubs and the wider School community* Gregor demonstrated a great level of enthusiasm within our company when he was involved in different projects (such as Global Launchpad Campaign or volunteering projects to help homeless people). Because of this, I strongly believe that he will continue to work in various student groups within our School and increase their popularity. Due to his work in the Sales Department, Gregor has built a significant network efficiently (try not to use future tense, like â€Å"he could†, be affirmative and boldly state that â€Å"he can† etc.) organising new projects with important partners from economy. Furthermore, he has significantly contributed to existing student groups by using his exceptional knowledge about

In What Ways Has California's 2011 Redistricting Process and the Open Essay

In What Ways Has California's 2011 Redistricting Process and the Open Primary Election Changed the State's Political System - Essay Example Moreover, the decision to hold primary elections will further intensify the situation as the position of the influential incumbents dominant in the Congress for years is at stake. Also, in the aftermath of the redistricting process some of the incumbents will be forced to retire however in other case, incumbents will be running against each other for elections, thus the open primaries would be significant in this context. In this case, it is being expected that the extreme Republicans or even Democrats will be replaced by new and neutral candidates by virtue of the open primaries, thus about a quarter of the seats owned by California in the Congress will be replaced by new candidates who wouldn’t have experienced the process before. To elaborate on the effects of the redistricting process, it is crucial to highlight the significance of redistricting to analyze the issues and implications of the process in California. The process of redistricting relates to the congressional al location of seats to the population of U.S. There are basically 435 seats whereby all seats have been uniformly distributed amongst the entire population of the U.S. However, the population census and the demographics keep changing with time, and thus they have to be re-analyzed with time to come up with fair allocation of congressional seats to the entire population, thus, after every 10 years the government goes through the process of redistricting based on the changes in population demographics of the U.S. California is one of the most populous state of U.S with 53 representatives assigned to this state alone. Historically, when redistricting took place it had no effect at all, and there was just a change in one of the seats which was swapped between the seats as a result of the primaries. Gerrymandering is one of the ways how the incumbents influence the redistricting process to avail the best chances to secure their positions, by changing the inclinations of the maps in such a way that the maximum number of voters` base is covered in the areas representing their districts. This results in the distorted figure of the maps that are produced after the gerrymandering process. The redistricting process held in 2011 was indeed a unique one as an effort was made to appoint neutral members for the purpose. In case of California as well, 14 members were appointed all of whom weren’t seasoned politicians or incumbents, rather amateurs which suggests that the chances of political point scoring or distortion of results was near to impossible. For this reason, many of the congressmen seemed unhappy with the decision. "When you go from a system that allows incumbents to draw districts that favor themselves to one that disallows considering incumbents at all, you're bound to have some incumbents paired together and some open districts," suggests Tom Bonier who`s the adviser for Democrats redistricting process. This implies that if the issue of incumbency is not t aken into account, chances are that multiple incumbents will end up running for the seat in the same district. Some of the general trends which emerged or are expected to emerge in the future can conveniently be traced after an analysis is conducted over

International relation policies and climate change Research Paper

International relation policies and climate change - Research Paper Example The paper "International relation policies and climate change" concerns international relation policies and climate change. The department further warned that the situation is likely to worsen in the years to come, if not attended to immediately. The figures also show a decline in the level of emissions in developed economies such as United States and Russia. This decline apparently is a reflection of economic weakness, environmental consciousness (e.g. use of renewable power sources), and transfer of manufacturing industries to developing countries. Unfortunately, the decline in the industrial emissions from the advanced economies significantly falls below the increasing rate of emissions in the developing countries, which care less for their contribution to the global warming. Low-income countries whose low-income population heavily depends on carbon-intensive fuels such as coal increasingly pollutes the environment. Emissions from low-income countries alone accounts for about 80% of the greenhouse gases. Since 1945, the United Nations has been on the fore-front fighting for the restoration and conservation of the global environment. The UN has organized for a number of conferences focusing on climate change. The fifteenth conference was held in December 2009 in Copenhagen, Denmark. Like the earlier conferences, the 15th Climate Change Conference failed to produce desirable, legally binding and equitable agreements. Though the conference discussed ways of reducing ambitious emissions., technological advancements to the problem, and methods of financing the policies, it was in vain. In the end, The Copenhagen Accord was neither a comprehensive framework which demands effective, responsible participation from all the leading stakeholders (governments, financial institutions, and the civil society groups) nor was it a collective effort aimed at combating climate crisis in a more integrated manner. The CoP15 (The 15th Conference of the Parties) to the United Nati ons Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) was therefore described as a failed policy as no binding agreement was arrived at. The aim objective of the conference was to discuss and propose polices which would be essential in keeping the average world temperature rise slightly below 2oC. Partisanship and self-interest resulted into two groups of the UNFCCC: Annex I and Non-Annex I countries which represented different interests. Annex I was composed of the 40 industrialized and transitional countries non-Annex I countries was made up of developing economies (Mazo 245). As claimed by members of the non-Annex I, a twenty six â€Å"representative group of leaders† from Annex I developed the Accord in their favor through un-transparent, restrictive, and top-down had developed the policies aimed at conserving the environment with little consideration to the minor countries. The â€Å"bottom-up pledge and review† approach to reducing global emission as described in t he Accord was perceived as unpractical and unfair mechanism of reducing reaching the desired goal of less than 2 percent annual increase in global temperature. So far, the ledges made under the Accord falls short of the delegates and representative call of ‘ambitious’

Philosophy Statement Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

Philosophy Statement - Essay Example lieve that teachers need to inculcate values such as punctuality and politeness and also instill a sense of responsibility within the students towards their own actions. In turn this will help the students to gain an insight into what is right and wrong and take the right decisions in their academic, personal life and all future endeavors. Thus teachers play a vital role in shaping the personality of their students apart from teaching the subject and hence play a dual role of both an educator as well as a counselor. I will also work to create a good rapport with my students as I believe it will pave the way for better interaction and understanding of the student’s thought process. Mere teaching of the subject would only be a professional approach which will not create a bond between the teacher and the student. Spending quality time with all the students and an unbiased attitude would help the students to share a good comrade with their teachers. However, it is also important for teachers to bear in mind the limits of their relationship and help the student to understand the same. When such an understanding is established it will prevent each one from taking advantage of the other. This would help to provide the right motivations for the students and prevent any form of deviant behavior. Thus with my educational experiences and a strong inclination in taking up career in teaching I assure that I will be an able teacher and provide the right guidance to all my

Emergency Management Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words - 5

Emergency Management - Assignment Example Some of these measures need proper training depending on the field of emergency management (McEntire, 2007). For instance, bomblast response tends to be totally different from football injury response. The magnitude of a problem calls for more time and a lot of aiding facilities to fasten the EM process. A large scale disaster tends to be very intensive in terms of management hence enough aiding facilities needed to accomplish the whole EM process. An intensive training and exercise is needed to catch up with such high magnitude disasters. All the needed aid facilities are supposed to be ready before a disaster to enhance effective control system. In any disaster or emergency management institution, employees must have the skills to operate machinery and basic knowledge to sport, understand, analyze and understand and respond to any kind of disaster within the institution scope. There are many institutions around the world that respond to different kinds of disasters. Specialization and employee training are vital factors in such institutions bearing the magnitude and high rate of daily catastrophes (McEntire, 2007). The training programs and exercises are meant to deepen employee understanding on proper measures to apply in dealing with different levels of disasters. Good strategies must also be employed to accomplish any EM activity successfully. According to the EM response of Luis Tapia and Matt Feryan, EM exercise and planning takes quite a long time depending on the time frame set by institutional managers or instructors (Dhillon etal, 2012). Minor exercise programs can take up to six months while major ones take close to one year. As per my perception, large scale disaster control programs should take more than one year to enhance proper preparation and catastrophe response tactics. Luis Tapia and Matt Feryan’s response to emergency management in the transcript shows that coordination among EM personnel is

Traffic Jam Essay Example for Free

Traffic Jam Essay Traffic jam is one of popular issue in over the world in general and Vietnam’s big cities in particular. The scientists and Vietnam Government have found out the causes of this problem, one of main causes is the traffic participant’s awareness. These include the knowledge about traffic regulations, respecting for the traffic policeman’s controlling and behavior in the streets. As we know, there is a huge number of people living in big cities, while the people who leave the countryside for the city to work and study make up a large proportion of population. Many of them do not have enough knowledge about traffic rules. On the other hand, they carry the countryside’s lifestyle to take part in traffic in a big city. Therefore, they do not know how to go correctly in a complex traffic. According to a sociology research, the inhabitant’s knowledge about traffic rules is so bad, among 360 answerers were only 8% said that they know and understand all of traffic regulations, 78% said that they just know some simple regulations and 16% said that they do not know any rule of traffic. Another important cause is people’s consciousness to execute the traffic rules. Maybe they know about traffic regulations very well but they do not respect because they think that it is not important even there is the control of policeman. For example, they know that when the red light is on they have to stop but they pass intentionally. Following the statistic of Hanoi Traffic Police Apartment, there were about 991,000 peoples broke the law with amount of penalty was 50 billions Vietnam dong in 2005. By 2006, it increases to 1 300 000 peoples and 100 billions Vietnam dong. And in 7 months of early 2007, there were approximate 700,000 cases broke the traffic regulations. The increasing infringement the rule help to raise traffic jam.

English: The Official Language?

English: The Official Language? For better or for worse, like it or not, English is in effect the official language of the planet. It is the most commonly used language of international commerce, politics, science, diplomacy, and the most commonly used language on the Internet. It is a lingua franca, or vehicular language, i.e. a language spoken and utilized outside of the country or countries of its origin, as opposed to a vernacular language, i.e. a language spoken within and amongst native speakers in the country of origin. English, like other lingua franca of the past, is often used as a second language to effect common communication for a specific purpose (such as diplomacy) between people for whom the lingua franca is not their first language. For example, French was once the lingua franca of diplomacy up until around World War I, only to be supplanted by English; scientists themselves declared English to be their lingua franca in a 1989 article in The Scientist magazine bluntly entitled The English Language: The Lingua Franca Of International Science. One may view the domination and global use of English as linguistic and cultural imperialism, and indeed we shall explore this notion further, but the simple fact is that the situation is unlikely to change any time soon. It is everywhere. Some 380 million people speak it as their first language and perhaps two-thirds as many again as their second. A billion are learning it, about a third of the worlds population are in some sense exposed to it and by 2050, it is predicted, half the world will be more or less proficient in it. (The Economist, 2001). It is thus in the best interest of citizens and governments of any nations that wish to participate on the global stage economically, politically, scientifically, etc., to embark upon official programs to ensure that people have the opportunity to learn English; in fact, it may be argued that the teaching of English should be mandatory in such nations. While there are cultural drawbacks to the institutionalized teaching of English in non-ENL countries, the benefits seem to outweigh the drawbacks, and we shall explore both as well. To understand the merits of education in English, as well as its drawbacks and the practical requirements therein, we must first understand something of the merits of the English language itself, the historical circumstances and cultures that spawned it, and why it continues to be durable and vital as a universal language. The global influence and power of the British Empire, and then subsequently the United States as the British Empires scope gradually eroded, is primarily responsible for the primacy of English as a de facto official international language. Latin, once the lingua franca for most of Europe, was gradually supplanted in the 17th and 18th century as global exploration and colonization; for a time, scholars and clerics who regularly traveled across the boundaries of national languages continued to use Latin and their lingua franca. But as knowledge of Latin declined and the rise of merchant and professional classes produced travelers unschooled in Latin,people sought alternative means of international communications. (Graddol,2000, p. 6) The victory of the Allies in World War II cannot be underestimated in terms of representing a huge step in cementing the destiny of English as the language eventually destined to be the universal language of the globe. The only two potential rivals at the time were French, mostly due to historical inertia, and German, mostly due to the astonishing rise to military and economic power of Nazi Germany in the 1920s and 1930s. Had the U.S. not lent its economic and military might to defeat the Germans and the Japanese, English might be a quaint relic of the planets short-lived experiment in democracy. Had Hitler won World War II and had the USA been reduced to a confederation banana republics, we would probably today use German as a universal vehicular language, and Japanese electronic firms would advertise their products in Hong Kong airport duty-free shops in German. (Eco, 1995, p. 331) Unlike almost every other major nation that fought in World War II, the United States emerged with its economy not only intact, but also thriving. It was therefore no surprise that the United States took the lead in forming and administering institutions to aid the reconstruction and reintegration of Europe, Japan, and many other regions of the world. In short order, English-speaking nations were also exporting their culture, not simply their goods and goodwill. The ongoing hegemony that the United States and Britain enjoy in terms of cultural communications film, television, books, music, etc., helps perpetuate the influence and staying power of English as an official language. Even such cultural communications that are translated into the native languages of individual countries are not immune to the Englishness of the communications, i.e., the distinctly American and/or British cultural elements that inform the language of the communications and therefore necessarily survive any competent translation and are inculcated into the minds of the listener/viewer/reader. In ways too intricate, too diverse for socio-linguistics to formulate precisely, English and American-English seem to embody for men and women throughout the world -and particularly for the young the feel of hope, of material advance, of scientific and empirical procedures. The entire world-image of mass consumption, of international exchange, of the popular arts, of generational conflict, of technocracy, is permeated by American-English and English citations and speech habits. (Steiner, 1975, p. 469) Other than the cultural, military, and political hegemony of the British Empire and of the United States, what might account for the staying power of English as a lingua franca? From a linguistic perspective, English is hardly the most sensible choice for a quasi-official global language. English, simply put, is not the most efficient and consistent language. English is an irregular and fractured language comprised of influences from Latin and Celtic, and later Scandinavian and Norman French tongues. Its syntax, construction, verb conjugation,spelling, and other grammatical constructions, etc., are riddled with maddening inconsistencies that at times befuddle even native speakers, to say nothing ofthose who struggle for years to master it as a second language. English lacks the simplicity and consistency of the Romance languages to the extent that it varies from its Latin and French influences, though it is certainly easier to learn and utilize than some Asian tongues. However, these same elements that make English a flawed language are also believed by many linguists to be strengths that assist in the durability and adaptability of English; it has historically adapted to and incorporated language influences with ease that it has encountered from around the globe. English has always been an evolving language and language contact has been an important driver of change Some analysts see this hybridity and permeability of English as defining features, allowing it to expand quickly into new domains and explaining in part its success as a world language. (Graddol, 2000, p. 6) As English owes its existence to the fact that it absorbs, not rejects new linguistic and cultural influences, its inherently hybridized nature makes it all the easier for English to assimilate characteristics of other cultures and languages, instead of reject them or demand they conform to some sort of rigid structure. As the rules of English are a bit fast and loose, English is well-suited to evolve on the fly. There are a variety of challenges facing both those who wish to learn English as a second language and those who wish to teach it. Some of these challenges are cultural, some are practical, but the utilization of English by non-native speakers in non-ENL nations is never as simple a matter as it might seem. Culturally speaking, some aspiring English speakers may feel pressure from the more traditional and/or conservative members of their own cultures to resist what they may label as American cultural imperialism, the decadent influence of consumer capitalist values from the West that are transmitted through theEnglish language. To embrace these values at the expense of ones own language and culture is frowned upon in many conservative cultures, for example, particularlyin fundamentalist Muslim cultures which have suffered from seriously strained relations with the United States in the past six to ten years. Often, proficiency in one or more indigenous or native tongues will co-exist, mingle, and/or exist in hierarchal forms of usage with English. The acquisition of English skills does not necessarily lead to the supplanting or replacement of the native tongue with English; the choice of which language to speak is often context- and audience-dependent. For example, in some cases speakers will employ code-switching, in which two participants in a conversation, who know both English and a local vernacular language, will switch back and forth between the two tongues as a means of negotiating and navigating their relationship, in some cases even alternating back and forth between languages within the same sentence. Graddol (2000) outlines some fascinating examples, including a situation in which a young job seeker enters an office in Nairobi, Kenya, seeking employment. The vernacular language in question is Swahili; the young man commences his job inquiry with the owner of the establishment by speaking in English. The Kenyan manager of the office, however, insists on using Swahili, thus denying the young mans negotiation of the higher status associated with English. (Myers-Scotton, 1989, p. 339) Their conversation goes as follows: Young Man: Mr Muchuki has sent me to you about the job you put in the paper. Manager: Uitumabarua ya application? [Did you send a letter of application?] Young Man: Yes,I did. But he asked me to come to see you today. Manager: Ikiwaulituma barua, nenda ungojee majibu. Tutakuita ufike kwa interviewsiku itakapofika. [If youve written a letter, then go and wait for a response.We will call you for an interview when the letter arrives.] (pause) Leo sina lasuma kuliko hayo. [Today I havent anything elseto say.] Young man: Asante.Nitangoja majibu. [Thank you. I will wait for the response.] (Graddol, 2000,p. 13) The managerasserts his authority as both manager and adult in a position that commandsrespect, and he utilizes his insistence on the vernacular tongue to indirectlycommunicate this authority and demand for respect from the young man. Theyoung man is shrewd enough a native speaker of Swahili to grasp the subtext ofthe exchange, which is in essence a command to show proper deference and notwalk into a shop trying to exploit the connection with a mutual Kenyan friendby speaking English. It is not that the manager does not speak English; hedoes, but he insists on a certain element of cultural integrity by insisting onSwahili. The young man picks up on this, and therefore switches to Swahili tobid the manager farewell and tacitly submits to the shopkeepers authority byconforming to his wishes. Had the young man entered the office and spokenSwahili, he might have been granted an interview on the spot, though it ispossible the boy meant no disrespect and in fact wished to display hiseducati on by speaking English. In any case, this example shows thefascinating, multi-layered cultural and personal interchanges that go on duringcode-switching. (Note also that the manager chooses to use the English termsfor interview and application, perhaps because there is no directequivalent in Swahili, or perhaps to illustrate his own ability with English asa point of both pride and warning.) As further examplethat the finding of linguistic common ground is not the cure-all forcommunications difficulties, we now turn to the topic of how speakers interactwhen they share only one language in common, i.e., English, instead of sharingin common speaking ability in both English and their own native, vernacularlanguage. Graddol (2000) provides us with another scenario from the studies ofFirth (1996), in which international phone calls between Dutch and Syrian goodstraders were analyzed to see how the respective parties interacted in English.In some cases, where one speaker is less proficient than the other, the formerwill employ a conversational strategy termed let it pass, in which the lessproficient speaker will mask his lack of understanding of what is being said bythe other by delaying a request for clarification, in hopes that what the firstspeaker said will become understood as the conversation continues. Onehumorous exchange went as follows, in which a Dane (D) and Syrian (S) discussan order of cheese that had gone awry. S: So I told himnot to send the cheese after the blowing in the customs. We dont want theorder after the cheese is blowing. D: I see, yes. S: So I dontknow what we can do with the order now. What do you think we should do withall this blowing, Mr Hansen? D: Im not uh(pause) Blowing? What is this, too big, or what? S: No, thecheese is bad Mr Hansen. It is like fermenting in the customs cool rooms. D: Ah, its goneoff! S: Yes, itsgone off. (Graddol, 2000,p. 13) What this exampledemonstrates is that an entire skill set and mode of sub-communication developsbetween non-native speakers who do not have another frame of reference incommon, i.e., the same vernacular language, further complicating theutilization of English in business and/or commerce situations. There are alsonumerous practical considerations that affect the utilization of English,particularly in teaching it to non-ENL speakers. For example, which versionof English should be taught? Despite the extensive global use of English, itis far from a homogenous language spoken and written in the precisely samemanner in each country. English, as befitting its history, is a language ofmany diverse dialects; British English is different from American English,largely in pronunciation, accent, and certain vocabulary words, and American Englishitself is sub-divisible into any number of different sub-dialects, includingBlack/African-American English, which in its purest form is so unique inaccent, grammar, and slang that it is almost completely unintelligible to manynative English speakers, to say nothing of speakers of English as a secondlanguage (ESL). The numerouschallenges presented by English pronunciation, grammar, and vocabulary may alsoserve as a roadblock for both students and teachers. The difficulty ofteaching the ambiguities of unstressed vowels, consonant phenomes, and stresstiming is considerable. English grammar and verb conjugation is extremelyirregular, requiring a considerable amount of rote memorization, instead of theapplication of logical and consistent rules, as found in Romance languages(Spanish and French rely on a consistent set of 13 verb tenses with largelyregular characteristics; English does not.) English vocabulary also requires a large amount of rote memorization, as the innumerable linguistic influences from which English draws its unusually large lexicon make it difficult to extrapolate and create words from basic linguistic structures as a speaker of Spanish can do. For example, the Spanish words pertaining to meat are all rooted in the Latin word carnivorus, whereas in English, they are not: carne = meat; carnicero = butcher; carnicerÃÆ'Â ­a = a store where meat is sold. For Spanish speakers, learning the underlying root word of a concept means the speaker should have little trouble deducing how to say related words; in English, there is no such consistency and therefore the barriers to effective learning and usage are high. On the other hand,there are inherent flaws in other major world languages, for which Englishprovides a natural compensation. One such example is Japanese, an ancient andbeautiful language rich in complexity and the capacity for subtlety and nuanceof expression, but also notorious -for those same reasons for itsinefficiency and lack of clarity when it comes to matters of politics, law,debate, and decision-making. In 1999, one of the most influential Japanesenewspapers, Asahi Shimbun issued a hotly debated call for English to beadopted as the official language of Japan, citing advantages ranging from theobvious greater Japanese ability to participate in science, internationaltrade, politics, etc. to the unusual, i.e., the newspaper asserted that theuse of English would in fact strengthen the usage of Japanese, whose linguisticweaknesses, the paper asserted, played a large part in the inefficiency of thegovernment. Quoting Yoshio Terasawa, a former director of Japans Economic Planning Agency, former member of the House of Councilors, and former president of Nomura Securities U.S. division, the newspaper delivered a stinging indictment of its own native language and recommended the usefulness of English when it came to decision-making in business and government: Japanese is fullof vague expressions, so people rarely talk in terms of black and white and itis very easy to blur responsibility. It is an everyday occurrence forgovernment ministers to spend 10 minutes answering a question in the Diet [theJapanese Parliament] without actually saying anything. But if Diet memberscould put their questions in English, it might be possible to do away with thenon-committal bureaucratic language that is too wishy-washy to translate intoEnglish. People wouldnt be able to fudge the issues any more, and not just inpolitics. (Kinomoto, 1999) The article wenton to remark, with some astonishment, that the expected outcries of culturalimperialism and the imminent demise of the celebrated individuality andindependence of the Japanese culture, were few and far between. The Japanesehave yet to make English their official language, unsurprisingly given theirhistoric national pride, but the open advocacy of the virtues of English usagewas remarkable. In the end, theutilization of English as a lingua franca second language has clear benefits.While the potential obliteration of cultural diversity worldwide, a constantsource of worry and debate, seems valid, one only need look as far as theexample of the Swahili-speaking office manager to see that indigenous speakersare finding ways for English and their own vernacular languages to co-exist,even with a bit of unease. So the challenge becomes not so much about whetheror not English is of neutral or positive benefit; it self-evidently is; butrather how to go about navigating the parallel use of English with otherlanguages across the globe, both augmenting the strengths of and compensatingfor the weaknesses of local cultures and local tongues. BIBLIOGRAPHY/ REFERENCES Fennell, Barbara. A History of English:A Sociolinguistic Approach, Blackwell Publishing, 2006. Garfield, Eugene. The English Language:The Lingua Franca Of International Science, The Scientist Magazine,1989, 3(10):12, 15 May 1989. The Triumph of English: A World Empire byOther Means, The Economist, 20 December 2001. Graddol, David. The Future of English?The British Council, 1997, 2000. Eco, U. The Search for the PerfectLanguage. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1995. Graddol, David, Dick Leith JoanSwann. English : History, Diversity and Change London: Routledge, 1996. FBailer, R. M. Gorlach,(eds.) Englishas a World Language. Ann Arbor: Michigan University Press, 1982. Myers-Scotton, C. Code Switching withEnglish: Types of Switching, Types of Communities, World English, Vol.8, No. 3., pp. 333-46. Kachru, B.. The Alchemy of English.Pergamon Press, 1982. Trudgill, P. J. Hannah. InternationalEnglish: A Guide to Varieties of Standard English, Arnold Publishers, 1982. Kinomoto, Keusuke. Should English Be Madethe Official Language? Asahi Shimbun, 29 August 1999.